2012 Christmas Greetings

The Christmas season provides us all with a chance to reflect on the many blessings we have received over the course of the year. Here are just a few of the events that occurred in the Watson household in 2012: 

Our family's highlight of the year, aside from discovering a new recipe for sugar-basted bacon, was the birth of Max in March. As the youngest child, he receives a lot of amorous assaults from the other kids and has endured heroically. His big blue eyes and charm make all of the drool-soaked suit jackets, yam-splattered walls and 4am wake-up calls negligible. He has, however, followed a disturbing trend our other kids exhibited as infants, in that he prefers to detonate his intestinal diaper bombs during church on Sundays. If you are interested in donating a small monetary contribution to our family's recently created 'new church clothes' fund, please log on to www.baby-poop-stains-everything.org ... thanks. 

Bailey (3) spent most of 2012 consuming Gogurt. Has she mastered her colors and basic numbers? Yes. Is it really cute when she pronounces "Doc McStuffins" as "Nic NicDockins? Yes. But I think her 2012 'theme' was primarily focused on refining her palate with regard to the various flavors of the curdled creaminess of Yoplait's core product offering. A few other milestones Bailey surpassed this year include 'pumping' her legs by herself on the swings, singing her own nonsensical musical numbers while dancing around in princess dresses, and comprehending the concept of what it means to be a BYU fan (although it was not an easy task based on football performance this year).

Drew has emerged as a neighborhood renaissance man--simultaneously honing his soccer skills as the fastest member of his soccer team, while at the same time advancing to the 'regional' level of the Reflections contest in both writing and music composition.  Despite his seemingly calm and collected demeanor, he spends a significant amount of time in his ninja suit defending our nation (and the world at large) from the forces of evil. Our fate is in his hands since he is the only one who can actually see the monsters who apparently invade our home on a daily basis. Drew also lost his first tooth recently and was elated to join the ranks of his six-year-old toothless comrades at school. 

Emma is a sweet big sister to Max and the other kids. She continues to advance in gymnastics and her 8-year-old muscular arms are the envy of all the 'neighborhood moms' on our street. Her Reflections contest musical composition also advanced to the regional judges and she recently tested for the 'advanced learning placement program' at school. In addition, she performed a stirring rendition of "Sunrise" at her piano recital along with a daddy-daughter duet of "What Child Is This?".  Her 2012 highlight was when her grandparents from Georgia and her cousin and aunt from Seattle came out to visit and see her get baptized. To top things off, she was able to get up on water skis for the first time this year after a week at Lake Powell with her cousins. 

Kelsey isn't just the glue that holds the family together, but she also serves as the duct tape, twine and WD-40. She packs her days full by helping kids with homework, wrangling a rambunctious den of cub scouts in our neighborhood each Wednesday, and setting up service projects for our family to do (toy drive for Primary Children's Hospital, Food Bank donation box decorating, making blankets for babies in the hospital, etc.)--a "supermom" in every sense of the word. She also cemented herself as local legend after winning the "People's Choice" award at our church chili cook off; not a small accomplishment since the competition consisted of 19 other entries submited by tenacious church ladies. She does have one questionable entertainment obsession that seems to have taken our nation's women by storm: Downton Abbey. Meh. 

As for me, I just try not to screw things up. I did have an eventful morning about a week after my 35th birthday when I found a single, maverick hair shooting straight out the side of my ear. Rest assured, the offending party has been plucked. In other exciting news, I will brag about using our smoker for the second-consecutive year to cook our Thanksgiving turkey (the results were spectacular). Although, now that I think about it, Kelsey actually did all of the prep work--I just put the turkey in the smoker at the time she told me to ... so ... I guess I'll focus on finding an impressive hobby in 2013. 

That pretty much sums things up for the year--have a great Christmas!

Love, 

the Watsons

Get a Melissa & Doug 25% Off Coupon When You Take the North "Poll"

I absolutely love Melissa and Doug toys and so this seems like a good deal! If you vote on their North "Poll" you get a 25% off coupon. My favorite toys are their standard wooden blocks and their magnetic dress up dolls! My little two year old loves their magnetic hidden picture puzzles. I love that all of their educational toys are fun and durable!

Bailey

New Camera!

I finally got a DSLR camera! I am so excited and have had fun playing with it. On Saturday I took a photography class from my amazing neighbor- she is an awesome teacher and I totally recommend her if you actually want to learn how to use your camera! I only knew how to turn on my camera before the class and now I only use manual mode! Anyway- here is a link to her site if you are interested in checking her out: http://jennifereliason.com/blog/

Here are a few of my shots with my new camera- I'm no professional, but I am having fun!

Family Update

I have neglected the blog for a while and I have finally decided to update on everything going on right now. Our biggest news is that we have put our house up for sale. Andy has started a new job and we have decided to move closer to his work. In July we were able to spend two weeks in GA with my family. We took the kids to do tons of fun things. Here is Bailey at the safari park- she wasn't too sure about feeding the animals.

Bailey did love the Georgia Aquarium (as did I). The kids got to see all of the animals up close- I really love this place!

Emma was really excited to go to the Tea Room with her cousin Meggie- so some of my sisters and my mom and me went on a girls outing to one of the cute southern tea rooms in Woodstock.

This is Emma feeding a giraffe at the Safari Park- I loved the giraffes!

My sister and her husband were kind enough to let us go spend a lot of time at their cabin on Lake Blueridge. We had a lot of fun hanging out at the cabin and boating. (that is Andy wiping out)

I was really proud of Emma because she was terrified of going on the tube, but overcame her fears and tried it and had a lot of fun.

Right before we left for GA we had a marathon week. Andy's grandmother passed away and he spent the week interviewing for jobs and we had Emma and Drew's birthdays and four parties that week. Here is Drew's idea of an awesome birthday...

Emma's was earlier that day. Unfortunately Andy was in CA and couldn't help with the parties, but my good friends Melissa and Allison were around to help out. Thanks!

The kids also got to celebrate with their cousins and grandma and grandpa.

We started our crazy week off with our neighborhood 4th of July party. Our amazing neighbors coordinate this every year and it is always awesome!

Finally, back in May, Bailey turned one! Unfortunately she had a sinus infection and ran a fever during her party. But the rest of us had fun!

Bailey was the only one to get a fun cake this year- in the rush to get through Emma and Drew's birthdays before we left town I didn't have time to make them involved cakes. But I did get to have fun with Bailey's...

Dessert

This is the fun Easter dessert the kids and I made for Easter dinner. We layered crushed oreos, gummy worms, and a pudding mixture in these flower pots and topped it off with some silk flowers. They turned out cute and brought a little bit of spring to our snow filled Easter.

Easter

I can't pass up an opportunity to get my kids new clothes and Easter is always the perfect excuse. I use to love going to find a new Easter dress with my mom each year and so I had fun spending time with Emma shopping for them this year. We also had fun dying eggs with the kids. I am only posting this last picture because I tried a new egg coloring method that ended up being fun. I found tie dyed eggs on Martha Stewart's website and tried it with these eggs. This is a first attempt so they weren't the best, but by next year I will be a pro. You take silk ties and cut them up and wrap up your eggs in them. You then wrap the egg and tie in white fabric, tie it up with a twisty tie and boil the raw eggs in vinegar water while wrapped. The coloring from the tie transfers to the eggs. It was a fun and easy project for Easter.